Deepen your connection to Gaia

Just sent out my monthly newsletter. This month, I wrote about three talented healers I’ve recently encountered who are all offering creative ways of dealing with the environmental crisis. I’ll be posting about it all month, and hope to hear from you. It is a challenging issue, but it’s high time we all do what we can to show up for Gaia – mother earth.
Here are a few ways to deepen your connection to Gaia:

• As part of your morning ritual, say good morning to the trees, stones, grass and flowers outside.
• Do a breathing exchange with a tree or plant.Here how to do it:

1. Head outside, and choose a tree or a plant to connect with. Trees are powerful choices!
2. Take a few moments to find your breath, find your center.
3. Then, take a few moments to appreciate the plant you have chosen. Notice how lovely it is!
4. As you exhale, become aware of the tree or plant inhaling CO2.
5. Become aware of the plant exhaling O2 as you inhale.
6. Do this for a few minutes.Thank the plant for the experience.

• Have a conversation with a tree or plant. I found, once I got more connected with plants, that particularly with the trees, I spent a lot of time apologizing to them. That was helpful! I apologized for the times I was unaware, an the ways I did not stay connected to the world around me. That helped with my own grief at the impending extinction.

Morning rituals

Here is the article from my January newsletter, which was sent to my newsletter tribe a couple weeks ago. Read this and all my key monthly articles first by signing up for my newsletter.

The inward season

Nature’s movement stills now, and moments of deep quiet are most plentiful. It’s as if you could inhale stillness and feel the coolness inch through your being. Why not go with the flow this month and spend more time in silence, taking a cue from mother earth and rest, look inward and listen?
Lately I’ve been writing and thinking about intention and our ability to clarify and energize our intentions for our lives. This auspicious first month of the year is a natural to reconnect with, clarify and deepen this powerful energy of intention.
One way of weaving your intention into your life is through ritual.
This is a season where daily routines are helpful, and it’s a lovely time to launch a daily morning ritual. Taking even 5 minutes to set your intention for the day, to give thanks to the divine for these fascinating lives we get to live, and saying good morning to the nature around you can take you into the day in a relaxed and positive way. I find in my own experience and with others, that the details of the morning ritual are less important than the power of daily repetition. So, beginning with something easy that you can stick with tends to bear the most fruit if you are just getting started.
Here are a few tips for launching your morning ritual:
Make the intention to commit to a morning ritual. Can you commit to 5 minutes each day for a week? If not, make it easier. If you have the fire for a bigger commitment, or already have a morning ritual, is there an invitation to recommit or deepen it? What might that look like?
Create a bit of sacred space. Making a space or marking your time as sacred can be a simple process. What’s important is your intention to be open to spirit. You might light a candle, pull together a few objects that have meaning for you, spritz some water or plant preparation (I use things like rose geranium o tulsi hydrosol). Put on some quiet music that you like.
Create your morning ritual. Again, this can be simple. It can be 5 minutes of conscious breath work or meditation. It can be the chanting of a mantra (shanti shanti shanti is a place to start).  It can be a sun salutation yoga flow in each direction. It can be 5 minutes of unstructured conscious movement with the intention of checking in with your physical body.
The power of practice. As the days go by, if you skip or forget, forgive yourself and get back to practice. Get fascinated with your practice. Get fascinating even with missing your practice: why was it too difficult to maintain or just how did you let yourself off the hook? How might it be easier or more appealing? Resist the temptation to be hard on yourself, and instead get curious and learn, coax and invite.
What is your morning ritual and how does it impact your life?
Be well!
Annie

Access your witness – exercise

There is a concept in yoga called the witness that is our ability to step back from a situation – to not react but to pause, relax and breathe so that we can align a response from a deeper more intentional level. It is a handy yet challenging practice.
Here is an exercise from my book for accessing your witness. It only takes a few minutes.
A Body-Based Relaxation: Accessing the Witness
Benefits: Stress management, aid to meditation. A tool for developing insight.
Contraindications: If you are unable to lie on the floor, this exercise may be done in a bed or in any position in which you can fully relax.
Instructions: Lie down on the floor in a place where you will not be disturbed for the period of this exercise. Close your eyes, breathe, and relax. Take a few breaths just to soften into the floor.
Imagine yourself floating above your body, looking down at yourself. Invite yourself to view this body with ahimsa (compassion, non-violence), or as if this body belonged to a beloved sister, brother, or friend.
What would you wish for this beloved being’s process of self-care?
What feelings do you wish for this person to have about her caring for herself? How might these feelings change his or her life?
From your work with identifying barriers and triggers (previous exercises in Every Bite Is Divine), what would you say to this beloved being’s work on that particular issue?
Bring awareness back into your physical body, stretch gently, and journal on any insights that came from this experience.
 
This excerpt is from Every Bite Is Divine: The balanced approach to enjoying eating, feeling healthy and happy, and getting to a weight that’s natural for you by Annie B. Kay MS, RD, RYT, and can be found in chapter four, on pg 71-2.

Thanksgiving Thrive post

Here is my recent post from Thrive, the Kripalu blog. It’s on the importance of the side dishes in helping to serve all the nutritional needs of the hearts and mouths you may be feeding this year.
Enjoy your pre-holiday frenzy, if you are in one. This is the big holiday for me this year, and I am hosting!
Blessings!